Cuba Shows ‘Evidence’ That Planes Violated Airspace

Cuba showed on state television Sunday what officials here say is evidence that two civilian planes shot down by their jets the previous weekend had invaded Cuban airspace.

For the first time, the government displayed flight plans, a black bag and a battery charger that it says were found nine miles from the Cuban coast--within the country’s 12-mile territorial limit.

Officials had repeatedly said that they have in their possession objects from the planes that would prove that they were in Cuban territory rather than in international waters, as the U.S. government has stated in condemning the attack.

The location of the downings has become a major point of contention as the United States and Cuba argue over culpability in the deaths of four members of the Miami-based Cuban American group Brothers to the Rescue.

President Clinton has accused the Cubans of acting brutally by shooting down the planes in international waters.

Cuban officials blame the United States for failing to halt unauthorized flights into Cuban airspace by planes taking off from Florida. Both governments acknowledge that Washington and Havana had communicated extensively about the flights for 20 months before the incident.

“The United States did not listen to Cuba’s repeated request to prevent these incursions into its sovereign airspace,” columnist Mario Jorge Munoz wrote in the government’s Sunday newspaper, Juventud Rebelde. “The White House kept silent and allowed Brothers to the Rescue to continue its actions with impunity. The guilt of the United States for the unfortunate incident is obvious.”

The government tried to reinforce that viewpoint with Sunday’s television broadcast, which gave a detailed account, with times, of what occurred during the five hours before two Cuban MIGs shot down the planes, according to Cuban records. At the end of the report, the broadcast showed flight plans, an oblong case inscribed with the words “Solidex Performance Video” and the battery charger.

They were recovered by Cuban helicopters and coast guard vessels three miles inside Cuban territorial waters north of Havana the day after the planes were shot down, according to the report.